Toxic Chemicals Blamed for the Disappearance of Arctic Boys
NUUK, Greenland - Twice as many girls as boys are being born in remote communities north of the Arctic Circle. Across much of the northern hemisphere, particularly in the US and Japan, the gender ratio has skewed towards girls for the first time.
Now scientists working with Inuit villages in Arctic Russia and Greenland have found the first direct evidence that this trend is linked to widespread chemical pollutants. Despite the Arctic’s pristine environment, the area functions as a pollution sink for much of the industrialised world. Winds and rivers deliver a toxic tide from the northern hemisphere into the polar food chain.
Scientists have traced flame-retardant chemicals used in everything from industrial products to furniture, phones and laptops to the food chain, finding high levels of these pollutants in seabirds, seals and polar bears. The Inuit have traditionally relied on a hunter- gatherer’s diet almost exclusively made up of marine animals, making them especially vulnerable to toxic pollutants.
Historically in large populations, it is considered normal for the number of baby boys slightly to outnumber girls in a trend believed to compensate naturally for greater male mortality rates.
But a peer-reviewed US study found an unexpected drop in the proportion of boys born in much of the northern hemisphere. The missing boys would number more than 250,000 in the US and Japan, using the gender ratio at the levels recorded up until 1970.
The researchers suspect-ed that this linked widespread exposure among pregnant women to hormone-mimicking pollutants. But Danish scientists examined 480 families in the Russian Arctic and found high levels of the hormone-mimicking pollutants in the blood of pregnant women, and twice as many girls being born as boys.
They are now studying similar communities in Greenland and Canada and although full results will be published next year, their initial findings exactly match those in Russia.
Lars Otto Riersen, a marine biologist, pollution expert and an executive with the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Amap), says: “When you see such things happening in the Arctic, it may happen here first, in the same way as climate change did.”
Although the nature of the Inuit diet is believed to have triggered the disturbing ratios in the Arctic, a similar pattern may be emerging further south. Until now, the only evidence of the impact of these toxins was circumstantial. The most skewed ratio had been in Canada, where a First Nation community in Sarnia lives amid Ontario’s petrochemical industry, and the number of boys born has plunged since the 1990s. The fallout from the toxic cloud in Seveso in Italy in 1976 allowed scientists to monitor dramatic impacts on both the gender ratios and numbers of babies born.
Every year in the industrialised world, household fires cause billions of pounds worth of damage, and chemical flame retardants designed to curb this are big business. They contain a host of chemicals some of which mimic human hormones. These chemicals became notorious in the 1960s and a worldwide ban on one category, PCBs, was introduced after tests showed they had entered the food chain with potentially lethal consequences for humans and animals. But the chemicals industry continues to produce variations of the retardants, which scientists claim are not subject to the long-range testing required.
Dr Jens Hansen, leader of Amap research, said they were finding incredibly high levels of banned PCBs among a cocktail of other hormone-mimicking chemicals in pre-natal mothers. Pregnant mothers, he said were ingesting these hormone-mimicking chemicals in their diet and passing them through the placenta where they influenced the gender of the foetus or killed male foetuses.
Aleqa Hammond, Greenland’s Foreign Minister, says: “We heard from scientists four years ago that our heavy metal consumption is dangerous.” She adds wryly: “If you ate me, you would die.”
Aqqaluk Lynge, head of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, said they were trying to raise the alarm internationally but nobody was listening. “People don’t want to talk about such a critical question. We are talking about our people’s survival which is very alarming.”
Greenland, the world’s largest island and still a dependency of Denmark, now has the highest proportion of women in the world.
© 2007 The Independent
Shocking information. Very scary.
Americans can clean up industrial corporations by becoming a larger corporation.
The chemical industry is sick and twisted.
I wonder if the end game of industrialized society is to create a matriachy.
Treefrog,
That may not be their conscious endgame, but maybe it’s the way patriarchy is destroying itself. The Inuits may not have much choice except polyandry in the next few generations.
Chems do other things to humanity. Some of the most pernicious things are mass learning disabilities and cancer, but there’s a huge list.
There are villages in Mexico where all of the kids clearly have learning disabilities. This speaks to humanity’s willingness to deny problems if nobody got immediatly sick or died immediately.
Maybe it’s Mother Gaia’s way of stopping the onlaught against her…
Anney and Treefrog: Too many women leads to polygyny, definitely not polyandry and probably not matriarchy. If you doubt it, look at the Mormon polygamists in the Arizona Strip. Those poor women are about as oppressed as women in Afghanistan. Those polygamists sometimes send away excess boys (Heard of polygamy’s lost boys?) and would probably love to have fewer boys born.
Whosit,
Thanks for the headsup — you’re right about polygyny instead of polyandry.
I suspect that at least in the Inuit culture, patriarchy just isn’t very strong, even though there are traditional roles because of childbearing. The culture is very peaceful.
Here’s an excerpt from that link:
We’re talking about a culture where there are twice as many girls (babies) now as boys, and they’re going to have to work that out somehow. Maybe we all will.
You’re probably right about the old Mormon culture where a shortage of men was at least desirable. When the numbers are more balanced, there’s a danger in polygamy because of the “distribution” of women. The old lions get most of the women, leaving the young men very frustrated and angry, prone to testosterone rages. If there are fewer men (that report says TWICE as many girl babies are being born as boy babies) in that area, they’ll not likely to be nearly as misogynistic, given the present culture.
What happens may turn on a dime.
The book “Our Stolen Future” was first to warn of such occurances; it has an extensive website documenting further, post-publishing, developments, http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/ What is mentioned only briefly in the artilce is the impact these chemicals are having on the global biosphere; humans may be able to get along without males through spermbank technology, but the organisms on which it relies for survival have no such luxury.
Perhaps humanity will be renamed womanity with the few remaining males enslaved as sperm factories as Gaia counterattacks in the war waged against her by avaricious–almost exclusively–males and their war god.
Yeah peaceful unless you are a whale or seal.
Maybe its their revenge.
Toxic effects on seals were reported in the late 80s and no one cared.
Regardless of whether they originated in North America like they believe, or came over the Bering strait, the Inuit will only be natives of the North when they can survive like seals and polar bears–the true natives, without any artifice. If they cant be born naked and survive–they arent truly natives. A very simple test.
Especially hypocritical if they are using non Inuit technology at all, like going to whaling conferences by airplane. They can embrace some aspects of modern society, but they pick and choose(like the Makah–they want whaling rights, but not the right to keep human slaves like was part of their tradition).
I just hope they dont drive the polar bear to extinction by selling off their “hunting rights” to non Inuit like they have been known to do.
kelmer
All the arctic animals are at risk for extinction because the polar cap is melting so quickly. The Inuits won’t have to sell any of the hunting rights for bears that no longer exist. Even now they’re drowning because they wander into open water and don’t have ice floes for support.
Global Warming Puts Polar Bear at Risk of Extinction
I wonder if the end game of industrialized society is to create a matriachy.
If I were to bank on it I would say that is not the intention but surely that is what is happening. Great Spirit knows exactly what he is doing however!
This is great news for the inuit and for humanity. A single male can father an arbitrary number of offspring, but a female can only have a limited number. So you only need a few males, anyway. Wouldn’t the world be a far, far nicer place with a lot fewer men on it?
Isn’t one of the theories of dinosaur extinction that they started reproducing only females??
Anney and Whosit
I think there will be changes in traditional roles, marriage and family relationships along with the division of labor. Women may have to play a greater roll in providing for a family. The morman example is still a patriarchy. Matriarchal societies are different. For instance family lineage is determined by the mother rather than the father.
I don’t like thinking that chemicals have such a profound influence in the world, but every living thing in the world is some how affected.
men are not all evil scum and women all nice. Humans are individuals.
MA_Matriarch
There must be an intended purpose though I am not sure what it could be. For that matter I am sure the dinosaurs were a bit confused too.
I hope the great mystery has a plan.
any chemical that has such a profound effect will have many other effects. it’s unlikely that the other effects will be beneficial. there are other examples of people who were living in balance on the earth being the first to suffer the effects of environmental damage.
Of all the terrible news flowing into the US, in addition to Bush’s war-making devastations, this news is even more alarming to my way of thinking. Toxic chemicals in the Arctic already affecting human life this way? What is it doing to other life, particularly marine life and all arctic animals in that food chain? The polar cap is melting at a stunning rate. Unless global warming is reversed very quickly, there won’t be an Arctic polar cap by 2025 (the date when it’s anticipated to be gone). The Antarctic ice cover is also melting at an alarming rate, affecting the water termperatures and flow rates all around the world.
While there may or may not be a connection, there has been an enormous leap in the percentage of children born in the last ten years who have learning disabilities, from autism to mental retardation.
Who knows how much the world is already suffering from toxic chemicals in the environment? Some life-forms may not have the unlimited time on earth that many people seem to blithely assume, not really thinking about what’s happening. I really hope I can look back some day and laugh at these fears, but something has begun and we’re already in the middle of it.
The looming silent presence behind the political scene is of course the industrial giants in all countries, and they continue to pollute the world, even when governments crumble and fall.
As I say, I hope my fears are unfounded.
anney, on another post someone suggested googling “Kissinger depopulation.” It appears a plan to depopulate the world was made some 20 years ago by 2 billion people through diseases and natural disasters. Civil war is listed as a less effective “back-up” plan to depopulate countries. Chilling reading, but makes some kind of bizarre sense if one doesn’t view non-white non-rich people as human.
Marikken
Toxic chemicals = WMD?
Diseases sweeping the world COULD be controlled — AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), measles, malaria, diarrhoeal diseases such as dysentery and cholera, and acute respiratory infections such as pneumonia were responsible for 90% of all deaths due to infectious diseases in 1998. Never mind new diseases that are appearing constantly. Is disease another WMD? Just let them run their course and kill millions?
Bush’s demand that aid for family planning to other countries must emphasize abstinence and prohibit birth and sexually-transmitted disease controls that are effective — another WMD? Is the Catholic Church a WMD, forbidding contraception to Catholics in many nations, thus increasing disease, poverty, and resulting in terrible overpopulation and concomitant deaths?
Seems to me that somebody doesn’t WANT the world’s population to stablize under rational means.
But the law of unintended consequences is quite likely to come into play with forces that nobody can control. Like women giving birth to only female children. THAT came out of the blue.
I read a story of global proportions and then read some comments that have my head shaking.
My community was the first in the world to have documented birth ratio skewing, and yes we like the Innu are Aboriginal people.
This is, ladies and gentlemen, the first sign of extinction. That conclusion was drawn by some if the brightest minds on reproduction and contaminants.
I have 2 girls, 1 boy. My community is Aamjiwnaang.
No, Paul M., the world would not be a better place if overrun by women. It is not good for the population for there to be a high imbalance favoring women over men. There’s always talk about male frustrations when males outnumber females. Well, the same would exist for women; frustration over non-eligible men. Most women want to SNARE a man, not SHARE a man. Unless it is forced upon them, of course. Women might act out and become violent in their frustrations to find a man. And women will be devalued more than what they already are. And having a few men carry their genes forward into the gene pool is not diversity. When there are approximately equal numbers of men and women reproducing, then most men get their genes into the gene pool, what IS diversity; not just a small few of their men getting their genes in the gene pool. And I would argue that there are plenty of people that can reproduce, that shouldn’t, i.e. just because I can jump off a bridge, doesn’t mean I should jump off a bridge.